


Because of Cornelia

by likehandlingroses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Lie Low At Lupin's (Harry Potter), M/M, and their pet!, literally...fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 14:29:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20508548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likehandlingroses/pseuds/likehandlingroses
Summary: When Sirius finds a stray kitten trapped during a rainstorm and falls in love with the bundle of fur, Remus thinks he knows how the story is going to end.He doesn't.





	Because of Cornelia

**September, 1980**

Remus eyed the water-logged kitten struggling in Sirius’s grip, his brow knit with doubt. From what he could gather from Sirius’s passionate, fragmented story, he’d found the stray trapped under a caved in log pile just down the road from the Howell cottage. 

“--they were under it, and it fell in because of the storm...she was the only one that...well, anyway, she was meowing like the devil...could hear it over my bike, and of course I stopped...and a good thing I did...just look at her…”

Remus, who ushered his dripping guest into the snug Welsh cottage his mother had left him, knew from the look of adoration in Sirus’s eyes that he had a mind to keep the kitten as a pet. 

Sirius didn’t know any better: he was a city boy, born to a London family who had never kept so much as a lap dog. Sirius had no notion of the ugly realities surrounding even the furriest and softest of creatures, and it would now be Remus’s job to break his illusions. 

“I doubt she’ll take to you…” he said, feeling grateful Sirius had at least enough sense to wrap the gray-haired kitten in his leather jacket. “She’s probably weaned by now, so domesticating her will be that much harder...if you can manage it at all…”

Sirius remained unbothered, still clearly smitten with the bundle of fur in his arms. 

“This baby?” he said, kissing the top of her head. “No...this little lady and I are good friends already, aren’t we?” 

The kitten was too firmly swaddled in Sirius’s jacket to do anything but accept his fond scratches to the head, though--in Remus’s opinion--she looked downright furious about the entire affair. 

After taking her to Diagon Alley for a wellness check and spaying, Remus cautiously reiterated that she might--after all--be happier outside. 

“In that  _ deluge _ ?” Sirius looked so outraged at the suggestion that Remus might as well have advocated for drowning the cat outright. 

“When the rain ends--”

“--it’s always raining,” Sirius said, fixing Remus with a pointed stare. “No, Cornelia is an indoor lady now. No more rain for her...”

The name made it official: Lady Cornelia was a new fixture of the cottage. Sirius kept repeating that he’d eventually move her over to his house in London,  _ of course _ . However, as Sirius was spending increasing amounts of time at Remus’s home, that promise rang emptier by the day. 

More afternoons than not, Sirius’s bike leaned against the fence and the rain pattered against the roof as Remus sat next to Sirius on the floor, watching him force Cornelia onto his lap while he patiently hand fed her. 

“Your hands aren’t ever going to stop smelling of salmon,” Remus would say, but Sirius would only smile all the wider as Cornelia condescended to eat from his hand. 

“It’s working, though,” he said. “You can’t deny that.” 

Remus couldn’t. Cornelia was a proper lady of the house within months, as docile as any cat Remus had ever known. She was spoiled to bits, of course (by both of them, though Remus would never admit it).

Looking back, Remus remembered Cornelia’s arrival as the first time he’d realized he was a little in love with Sirius Black: standing on the porch, soaked from the rain, cooing over an irate kitten wrapped in his biker’s jacket. 

In 1981, on the third of November, Remus offered Cornelia to his father.

“I can’t possibly take care of her on my own,” he said, assuring his father that of course he’d come and see her as often as he wanted, that he might even bring her by the cottage “so she doesn’t forget where she came from.” 

He didn’t have the heart to tell his father that he’d moved out of the Howell cottage entirely.   
  


* * *

**June, 1995**

Sirius wished Remus would simply admit that he hadn’t lived in the house for years. People could sense that sort of thing...or Sirius could, anyway. The rooms were too empty, the cabinets too neat, for him to have been staying there for more than six months. Nine months, if you accounted for the fact that Remus was meticulously neat and avoided attaching sentimental values to objects. 

In any case, he’d certainly not been living there for over a decade. Even Remus would have some old bills laying about, some long forgotten pajamas he’d never worn pushed to the back of a dresser drawer. 

Remus didn’t seem keen to talk about the missing pieces. Whether that was for Sirius’s sake or his own, Sirius didn’t know. He knew he wasn’t helping matters; living in a house was bringing to light a new restlessness in Sirius’s disposition. He couldn’t sleep when the rain pattered on the roof, and he couldn’t bear the coldness of the floorboards in the morning. The curtains could be open or they could be shut, but half-drawn felt wrong, wrong, wrong. 

With each new unveiled peculiarity, Sirius felt Remus holding his breath for longer, pulling back a little more. Waiting to see if things might settle into a pattern they could face. 

Sirius heard the front door creaking open as he finished his cup of tea. He stood, ready to offer to help Remus with the groceries, when he heard Buckbeak give a violent squawk, followed by the screech of a cat. 

“Damn it,” Remus hissed. “Cornelia, come out from there…oh come on, now...you’re going to get yourself stuck back there, and then what will we do with you? Love...” 

Sirius hurried out to the living room, his heart pounding. Buckbeak was standing in his corner of the room, looking disgruntled by the disruption, but otherwise calm. He wasn’t really bothered by something as small as a cat...he’d been posing, that was all. 

Remus had set his bags down on the floor and crouched down in front of the bookshelf, trying to coax Cornelia out from under it. 

Sirius knelt beside him wordlessly, his hands shaking. Remus was saying something about how he should have realized...he’d meant for it to be a surprise...but all Sirius cared about was his Cornelia’s shining eyes peering at him from under the bookcase. 

“Come on, then…” he whispered, holding his hand out and wincing at how pale it was...how skeletal and foreign the fingers still looked. 

“I’ll put the food away,” Remus murmured before standing. Sirius gave a cursory nod, his eyes fixed on Cornelia. 

“It’s alright…” he said, crouching lower. “We’re home in one piece after all this time, aren’t we?”

Slowly--her ears back and her tail swishing--Cornelia crept out from under the bookshelf. She eyed Sirius’s hand with caution, sniffing around it before pausing, one paw held just above the floor as if she were frozen in thought. 

“Hello, little lady.” Sirius’s voice shook, and he knew before Cornelia rushed to his side that she remembered the parts of him that it still hurt to think about. 

She was still pacing on his lap, entirely unsettled by his arrival, when Remus came back into the room. 

“Of course, she comes out for you…still the favorite.” He sat down next to Sirius on the floor. 

“I explained to her that Buckbeak’s just a big cat, isn’t he?” Sirius said, and at the sound of his voice, Cornelia stopped her pacing and stared at him. She closed her eyes as he scratched the nape of her neck. She was the warmest, softest thing in the whole world, and she was  _ his _ . “They’ll be good friends, in a day or two…”

He looked at Remus, who ran his own hand along Cornelia’s coat before pressing his forehead against Sirius’s. 

“She’s been safe at my father’s,” he said upon pulling away, his face paler than usual. Sirius suspected it was as close as Remus would ever come to telling him about the pain of those twelve years. “Waiting for you to spoil her again, I expect…”

“Well, she’s a proper old lady now, so I’ll have to, won’t I?” Sirius said with a wink. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is based rather loosely on the song "Cornelia Street" by Taylor Swift.


End file.
